Thirty years after his death, the “Father of Afrobeats” Fela Kuti has made history by becoming the first African to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards.
The Nigerian musician, who passed away in 1997, posthumously received the award along with several other artistes at a ceremony held in Los Angeles on the eve of the 68th Grammy Awards.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
It is an honor for his family and friends, some of whom were in attendance, who hope to help spread Fela’s music and ideology among a new generation of musicians and music lovers. However, even they admit that they were quite late in recognizing this.
“The family is happy and excited that he is finally being recognized,” Fela’s daughter Yeni Kuti told Al Jazeera before the ceremony. “But Fela was never nominated.” [for a Grammy] “While he was alive,” she lamented.
She said the ratings were “better late than never” but “we still have a long way to go” to fairly evaluate musicians and artists across the continent.
Renowned Nigerian artist and designer of 26 of Fela’s iconic album covers, Remi Gariokwu, said the fact that this is the first time an African musician has won this honor “shows that whatever we as Africans need to do, we need to do it five times more.”
Gariokuu said he was “honored” to be able to witness this moment of blowjob. “It’s good that one of us can represent in that category, at that level. So I’m excited. I’m happy,” he told Al Jazeera.
But even he admitted he was “surprised” when he first heard the news.
“Mr. Fela was a complete dissident, and now the establishment recognizes him,” Garioukou said.
As for what Fela’s reaction to the award would have been if he were still alive, Gariokuwu said he imagines he would be happy. “I can even see him pumping his fist and saying, ‘I got it, I got it, I got your attention!'”
However, Yeni feels that her father would have been hardly fazed.
“He didn’t do that at all.” [care about awards]. “He was playing music because he loved music. He didn’t even think about it,” she said. What made him happy was being recognized by his people, his fellow artists. ”
Emisi Ransom-Kuti, Fela’s cousin and head of the Kuti family, agrees. “If you knew him, he might have said, ‘Thank you, but no thanks,’ or something like that,” she laughs.
“He wasn’t really interested in public opinion. He wasn’t driven by what other people thought about him or his music. He was more focused on his own understanding of what impact he should have on his profession, his community, and his continent.”
She told Al Jazeera that she believes the award may not have meant much to him personally, but that he would have recognized its overall value.
“I think he will recognize the fact that it would be good to start the process of giving such institutions honor in their rightful places across the continent,” Ransom-Kuti said.
“There are a lot of great African philosophers, musicians and historians, but they don’t really get to the forefront and be in the spotlight. So I think he would have said, ‘Okay, that’s great, but what next?'”
“The influence of fellatio transcends generations”
Fela was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome Kuti (later renamed Fela Anikulapo Kuti) in Ogun State, Nigeria, in 1938 to an Anglican minister and school principal father and an activist mother.
In 1958, he went to London to study medicine, but instead enrolled at Trinity College of Music, where he formed a band that combined jazz and highlife.
After returning to Nigeria in the 1960s, he continued to create the Afrobeat genre, which blended highlife and Yoruba music with American jazz, funk, and soul. This laid the foundation for Afrobeat, a later genre that blended traditional African rhythms with modern pop.
The list of this year’s Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipients states: “Fela’s influence spans generations, inspiring artists such as Beyoncé, Paul McCartney and Thom Yorke, and shaping modern Nigerian Afrobeats.”
But beyond music, he was also a “political radical.” [and] Outlaw,” the quote adds.
By the 1970s, Fela’s music had become a vehicle for fierce criticism of Nigeria’s military government, corruption, and social injustice. He declared his Lagos commune, the Republic of Kalakuta, independent of the state, symbolically rejecting Nigerian authority, and in 1977 released a hard-hitting album, Zombie, containing lyrics depicting soldiers as mindless zombies with no free will. In the aftermath, the military stormed Kalakuta and brutally assaulted residents, injuring and killing Fela’s mother.
Frequently arrested and harassed during his lifetime, Fela became an international symbol of artistic resistance, and Amnesty International later declared him a prisoner of conscience following his politically motivated imprisonment. When he died of illness in 1997 at the age of 58, an estimated one million people attended his funeral in Lagos.
Yeni, along with her siblings, is now the custodian of her father’s business and estate. She runs Afrobeats Hub,
The New Africa Shrine in Ikeja, Lagos, hosts an annual festival called “Felabration” in honor of Fela.
She remembers growing up with a father who was larger than life. That was all she had, and it felt “normal.” But, she says, “I was in awe of him as an artist and as a thinker.”
“I really, really respected his ideology. The most important thing to me was the unity of Africa…He was something I completely adored and admired.” [former Ghanaian President] Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was fighting for the unification of Africa. And I always wonder, can you imagine if Africa were united? How far away would we be? How progressive will we become? ”
Reflecting on Fela’s legacy, artist Gariokuwu says most of today’s big Afrobeat musicians are influenced and inspired by Fela’s music and fashion.
But he laments that most people have “never really looked into the ideological part of Fela, which is Pan-Africanism, and have never really looked into it.”
For him, Fela’s Grammy win should be a message to young artists. [like Fela] For someone who was completely anti-establishment to be recognized in this way, maybe I can express myself without too much fear. ”
Yeni says she wanted to convey a message of African unity and political awareness to young people through Fela’s work and life philosophy.
“Maybe this award will encourage more young people to talk about it more,” she said. “I hope they will be exposed to Fela more and want to talk about progress in Africa.”
